CHRISTINE PEARSON, management professor and co-author of “The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Invicility Is Damaging Your Business and What To Do About It”

You say incivility is screwing up the workplace, but one person’s “uncivil” is another’s “direct” or “tough.” How do you define incivility at work?

Incivility is seemingly inconsequential, inconsiderate words and deeds. And it’s important to emphasize “seemingly” because it affects people badly, harming cooperation, collaboration, work ethic and all that. The distinction between being tough and being uncivil is that incivility goes against conventional workplace conduct.

What are typical examples?

Interrupting people, not giving credit where it’s due, hoarding plum assignments, giving others the silent treatment when you don’t like what they’ve said. The basics come into play here, too — not saying “please” and “thank you” when people are doing something for you. Taking credit for other people’s work.

Are there any circum-stances when it’s OK to to be rude in the workplace?

Not in my opinion, no.

What if somebody is being consistently uncivil to you?

Depends on what level the person is relative to you. If it’s somebody below you, let them know it and put something on the line that matters to them, whether it’s their job or a promotion or whatever. Make it meaningful to them to change their behavior fix it immediately.

If it’s somebody who’s higher, get people involved who have greater power than the offender. Get it on the record, if you can.

If it’s a peer, you can do two things. One is just forgive it if it’s not a habitual thing and chalk it up to a bad day. But if it is a habitual thing, what most people do is work around them. I wouldn’t say that’s actually my prescription, but that’s what we’ve found most people do.

Do people realize when they’re being uncivil?

Some do and some don’t. For some people, there’s intention behind it. Others tell us they don’t know the difference, and that they’d like more training to understand where you draw the line. They also say they just get too busy and don’t think about cutting people out of meetings or not thanking them for work they’ve done and so forth.

What do you say to someone who thinks worrying about this stuff is encouraging weakness?

That’s the whole message of the book. There are big dollars attached to incivility. If you’ve got one person at a top level in an organization who’s habitually uncivil, it can easily cost you millions of dollars in terms of turnover. And people bring less than their full selves to the workplace. It’s money that is bleeding out of organizations and costing them a great deal. And the fix is, relatively, really cheap.

What’s the latest innovation in incivility?

One of the most controversial is texting and e-mailing during meetings. A lot of people do it.

Have you seen anyone texting while you’re speaking on incivility?

As a matter of fact, the first time I did, yes! I was giving a lecture in the Middle East and it annoyed the heck out of me! Someone sat there texting the whole time I was talking.